


Memories like Broken Glass (slipping through my fingers)

by xshadowphantom



Series: bad times in brooklyn [4]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Concussions, F/M, Gen, Gratuitous Movie References, Head Injury, Hurt Jake Peralta, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, holt literally being jake’s dad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24460966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xshadowphantom/pseuds/xshadowphantom
Summary: After all, Bruce Willis wouldn’t let something as stupid as ‘head trauma’ stop him from saving the day, so why should Jake?ora very concussed detective peralta works a case and accidentally lives out several real-life action movie dreams.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Ray Holt & Jake Peralta
Series: bad times in brooklyn [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662124
Comments: 47
Kudos: 211





	1. The Setup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote 90% of this in one sitting and then spent the next three weeks crawling through the final 10%
> 
> set season 6, post ‘casecation’

“Marissa Carlisle,” says Terry as he drops a heavy case file onto Jake’s desk with a resounding _thunk_.

“Who?” Asks Jake in return as he hurriedly sweeps wastepaper and knickknacks onto Amy’s old desk to make room for the Sarge’s new papers.

“Investigative reporter. She was writing an exposé on City Councilman Howser directly tying him to a few mysterious payoffs to, wait for it, the Pietrone Family.”

“Oh damn.” Jake reaches for the file in a sudden surge of enthusiasm. “That is an A-list mob.”

Terry nods. “And unfortunately, they found out about Carlisle’s piece and sent a hitman to silence her before she could publish it. She managed to escape the first attempt and we’re putting her under police protection while we look for the guy. Captain Holt wants you to take lead on the security detail.”

“A reporter in too deep, an assassin for hire combing the streets, a dashingly handsome cop saving the day; oh, Terry, I can already see the movie posters.” Jake grins ecstatically, using his arms for emphasis as he paints the scene. “I’ll do it.”

“Great,” Terry replies, “Uniforms on the second floor are already setting up transportation to get Marissa to a safehouse. Holt will want to brief you on details, but I’d recommend looking this over before he calls you in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think Scully is choking on his trail mix again.”

He leaves the case file on Jake’s desk and makes his way over to where Hitchcock and Scully are unsuccessfully taking turns giving each other the Heimlich.

Jake drums absently on his desk while he reads over a list of mob-related suspects and checks out Marissa’s statement. So far, her description of her attacker hasn’t matched anyone in the crime family, so the primaries on the case have begun to expand their search to suspects with less direct ties.

Also, she’s apparently a total badass who escaped the assassination attempt by using a curtain to jump out of a window and into an empty apartment two floors below in a move which _she herself_ literally described as “ _Die Hard_ -ing”, which, how was that not the first thing Terry mentioned about this woman?

Basically: if Marissa is half as fun as her statement makes her out to be, this could be the best civilian protection assignment he’s ever had. No offense to Kevin, of course.

“Peralta,” calls Captain Holt, as if sensing Jake’s thoughts, “My office.”

Jake crosses the bullpen, then doubles back to grab the file in case he’s not supposed to be leaving it out. “Hola, Cap-i-tan,” he greets, closing the office door behind him.

Holt, predictably, ignores Jake’s antics and gestures for him to sit.

“I trust Sergeant Jeffords has explained the Pietrone case to you?”

“Oh yeah. Big crime family, lots of illegal activity, definitely not as cool as the Ianucci’s but I’m adaptable.”

“Strange,” says the captain blankly, “I don’t recall any of those phrases being in my briefing instructions.”

“You know it’s no fun when you play along,” Jake accuses petulantly, expression morphing into a pout.

Captain Holt’s face adopts the closest approximation to a smile that his robot programming allows.

“You will have to leave your personal cellular device somewhere safe and will not be allowed contact with the 9-9 to ensure the integrity of your location. However, the NYPD has been building a case against the Pietrone’s for a very long time. With the additional evidence Ms. Carlisle has uncovered, it should only take two to four more weeks to solidify our case and make the necessary arrests. Are you sure you can handle this assignment?”

Jake raises an eyebrow, rocking on his heels. “Uh, if I could spend nine weeks with Kevin, who’s only ever seen 8 movies that weren’t documentaries, I think I can manage less than half that time with a fellow Bruce Willis enthusiast.”

Holt stares at him over the bridge of his glasses, face impassive as ever.

“Peralta, this is very important case involving several high-profile individuals. Please do not turn this into one of your action films. There will be no explosions or gratuitous fighting. I expect you to treat this situation with the professionalism it dictates.”

Jake forces himself to stand still and rolls his eyes. “Yes, Captain, obviously I know this isn’t gonna be as cool as _Die Hard_ because, spoiler alert, nothing is as cool as _Die Hard_ because it’s the greatest movie ever made.”

“Yes, you have mentioned that,” replies Holt, “Several times, actually.”

‘ _And yet you still haven’t watched it_ ’ rests on the tip of Jake’s tongue, but he decides to let it go for now. “Point is, I can be very professional. I wore a suit jacket to a party that one time, remember?”

Holt nods thoughtfully, tapping his chin with the tip of his glasses. “Yes,” he agrees, “It was highly impressive. Alright. Go down to the armory and see Officer Maggetti. She will supply you with a burner phone for check-ins and updates, and some emergency gear in the unlikely event that you need it.”

“Great, here’s what I’m thinking: sniper rifle and grenades just to be safe, one of those thermal vision goggle headsets, emergency candy cause you know I get snacky, and I get to take one of the sports cars from the impound lot.”

“You will get none of those things.”

“You never let me do anything fun!”

• • •

Marissa Carlisle has already been moved into the apartment by the time Jake is cleared and ready to go, and the complication of moving her to yet another location while a hitman is actively hunting her is the only thing that stops Jake from immediately pleading for a new place the minute he steps foot in the room. The small, family-owned apartment building is inconspicuous, sure, but the unit is about the size of the place he used to sublet from Gina and somehow smells even worse.

There’s one bathroom, one living room that doubles as a kitchenette, and an empty doorway with a curtain that leads to the single bedroom, so he can probably look forward to taking turns sleeping on the couch for the next two to four weeks.

The apartment smells strangely of old ham, and it looks like Marissa has lit several candles in an attempt to chase away the weird odor, but so far all it’s done is mix the smells together to create a scent Jake dubs “floral stank.”

Marissa herself is sitting at the little kitchen table, nervously running her finger around the rim of a coffee mug.

“Hi,” Jake says, like he’s the awkward kid at camp introducing himself to his cooler bunkmates, “I’m Jake. Detective Peralta.”

She gives him a half wave. “Marissa. But you knew that,” she gestures vaguely at their surroundings, “Obviously.”

“Yeah.” He lets his gaze flit around the room while he thinks of something to say. “So...do you like Nick Cage movies?” He tries, holding up the little 32-sleeve DVD carrier he packed.

She stares at him for a moment, like she’s trying to gauge how serious he’s being. “He’s only the most compelling actor of our generation.”

Jake grins. _Awesome_.

• • •

She gives him as much of a tour is possible in an apartment with only 2 and a half rooms while he unpacks his things and shoves his gear into the closet by the front door.

“That’s it?” She asks, when all he stows are two vests, a taser, a first aid kit, and his regulation firearm. “What about, like, sniper rifles and headgear and everything?”

Jake pouts right alongside her. “My captain vetoed the cool stuff.”

“Damn. I was looking forward to getting in a high speed car chase towards the end of this and maybe throwing a grenade out the window while you step on it.”

Jake’s hand flies over his heart. “God that would be so cool. Unfortunately I was specifically banned from causing explosions during this case.”

“Bummer,” says Marissa, “You wanna watch a Nick Cage movie and live vicariously through him?”

“Hell yeah. Do we have any microwave popcorn here?”

They don’t, as it turns out, because apparently whoever stocked their cabinets didn’t consider popcorn an essential food, which is entirely ridiculous. Corn is a vegetable, so by all Jake’s calculations that makes popcorn at least vegetable-adjacent, and according to Amy he’s supposed to eat 5-7 servings of vegetables a week. (It’s per week, right? 5-7 veggies a _day_ seems like overkill, but there’s no way its per _month_ either. He’ll have to ask Amy when this is all over.)

Point is, there’s no microwave popcorn to be found, so he settles for baked pita chips because at least they’re crunchy enough to trick his brain into thinking they’re a proper snack.

“I can’t believe you bought _The Wicker Man_ on DVD,” Marissa says when he returns to the couch with a bowl full of chips, holding up his movie collection and fixing him with a brutally judgmental look, “Like you spent actual money on this thing. ‘Not the bees. _Not the bees!_ ’”

“First off, bees are terrifying,” he defends, “And also, it’s _so funny_. Terrible acting, terrible script, and painfully stupid; it’s basically a feature length 2006-era YouTube video. Besides, I’ve made it my mission to own every movie the great Nicolas Cage has ever blessed humanity with, and I refuse to leave holes in my collection for reasons as weak as ‘but it sucks.’”

She shrugs noncommittally. “Wanna watch _National Treasure_? Start with the classics and work our way into obscurity?”

“Sounds good to me.”

She pops the disc in, and they settle into a semi-comfortable movie-watching silence up until the point where the antagonists kidnap the female lead and Marissa abruptly stops the movie.

“Hey, Jake?” She asks, still staring at the glowing screen, “You’ve done this before, right? Witness protection?”

He nods. “A few times, yeah.”

“And everything worked out okay? The police caught the bad guys and everyone lived?”

His mind flashes unwittingly back to last year’s safehouse debacle. Yeah, probably best to not bring that one up. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you, Marissa,” he says softly, “My precinct is working around the clock to catch this guy, and because of you they’ve got everything they need to put him away. We’re just gonna be holed up here for a couple weeks and before you know it you’ll be home, okay?”

“Promise?”

 _Don’t promise anything_ , says his internal cop voice. “Totally,” says his real voice, “And in the meantime we’ll watch so many Cage movies that by the time this is over you’ll never wanna see his face again.”

“Impossible,” says Marissa, and smiles a little, “He’s a national treasure.”

Jake’s nose crinkles with disapproval and he boos at the wordplay.

“I stand by that,” replies Marissa stubbornly, and presses play.

They finish the movie without further interruption, occasionally throwing out their personal commentaries on different scenes—“In your professional opinion, how many crimes were committed in those five minutes alone?” “The dude’s entire career consisted of knowing historical facts for treasure hunting, _how_ did he fall for the lantern gambit?” “I, too, would give up one billion dollars in exchange for a lifetime of domestic bliss with Diane Kruger.” “I know he’s the hero and we all rooted for him but how the hell did he not get arrested at the end of all this?”

The credits begin to roll just as Jake’s watch beeps with a reminder to call in to the 9-9 to ensure that he is, in fact, alive and well. He excuses himself to the bedroom and waits until the exact moment that the second hand marks the start of a new hour before dialing the only number in his burner, because Captain Holt loves timeliness and there’s no harm in getting extra brownie points that can hopefully one day be cashed in for a chopper.

In typical robot fashion, Holt barely wastes any time on a humanoid “hello” before launching into business. “How are things with Ms. Carlisle?” He asks, within seconds of picking up the call.

“So great,” Jake says with a grin, “We are _vibing_.”

“In relation to the case, Peralta.”

“Oh. I knew that’s what you meant. Um, things are pretty normal. No suspicious activity in or around the building, keeping a low profile, following the window-related precautions you taught me. Also Marissa thinks you should let me have a tank.”

“Yes,” Holt replies, “A tank; what an excellent way to remain covert.”

Jake slumps down onto the too-hard mattress and lets his feet swing back and forth. “You know, ever since Gina taught you sarcasm you are way less fun,” he comments. Holt responds with a quiet pause that Jake recognizes as his ‘you make a good point but I will never admit it’ brand of silence.

“So how are things at the 9-9?”

“Uneventful,” says Holt, “Although Detective Boyle did spend much of the morning expressing his remorse that you were not here to taste his new chicken soup recipe.”

“Chicken soup?” Jake repeats, and sighs wistfully, “You’re seriously telling me that the one time Charles wanted me to eat something normal I’m not there?”

“Normal may be a slight understatement,” responds Holt conspiratorially, “The soup contained chicken testicles.”

“Ah, of course it did.”

“Boyle claims the testes are a delicacy.”

Jake makes a face of mild disgust at the idea of eating (and enjoying) chicken nards. “Sounds about right. Well, tell everyone I say hi.”

“I will. I’ll talk to you tomorrow evening. Goodnight,” says Holt, then pauses for a second. “Oh, ah, Santiago asked me to remind you to brush your teeth.”

Jake fails to suppress a smile at the thinly veiled parenting. Amy hasn’t bugged him about health and hygiene since year one of their relationship. “Will do. Bye, sir.”

• • •

Day three in the safehouse (safe apartment?) is spent debating the merits of _Die Hard_ vs. _Die Hard: With a Vengeance_. Marissa argues that the intellectual Simon Gruber is a more compelling villain than Hans, which in turn makes the entire third movie more compelling, and Jake consults his mental list of ‘Reasons Why _Die Hard_ is the Perfect Movie’ to explain to her why she’s entirely wrong and none of the sequels have managed to live up to the (many, many) advantages of the original.

In the end the only way to settle the debate is by watching the two movies back to back. By the time they’ve finished their four and a half straight hours of Bruce Willis kicking ass and taking names, it’s late in the evening and, hey, that’s another day down and he’s successfully kept Marissa’s mind off of the people trying to kill her.

On day five, during his nightly 7:00 check-in with the precinct, Captain Holt tells him that they’ve narrowed in on a suspect: Mark Douglas, a 42-year-old Queens native with no priors save for one count of second-degree aggravated assault in his early twenties, wherein he drunkenly attacked a fellow bar patron with a knife. No one was injured and after he served his sentence, Douglas supposedly got himself back on track.

 _Well_ , Jake thinks as Holt runs through lists of mob-related incidents that Douglas is suspected to have been involved in, _Clearly that didn’t work out for him_.

Apparently, Douglas has been on the NYPD’s watchlist for years as a potential Pietrone-connected hitman for hire, but because he’s never missed a target and never left any evidence behind, they’ve never been able to reliably pin anything on him until now. Unfortunately, since Marissa not only survived the attack but also provided a statement and a solid sketch of the guy, he’s gone to ground. On the bright side, the police department can finally open a deeper investigation into him.

They’ve already swept Douglas’ Brooklyn apartment and the 1-0-7 is waiting for a warrant to search his Queen’s address. If nothing turns up there, they’ll turn to the places rented out under his mother’s name. Depending on how long it takes for a judge to give them a green light on their various searches, it could be at least another week before they can even figure out where Douglas is hiding.

It’s fine though, because even if Marissa doesn’t think _Die Hard_ is a Christmas movie she’s still super fun to be around and pretty darn easy to protect. Seriously, her self-preservation skills are incredible. Jake could never.

On day six, Marissa mentions offhandedly that the thing she misses most about civilization is eating pizza that didn’t come from a freezer box, and Jake seriously entertains the idea that Marissa could be another one of his half sisters that Roger never knew about, except for the fact that in terms of looks there’s no way the two of them share any DNA.

Still, despite the low probability of them actually being related, “cop is assigned to protect witness and then finds out witness is his long-lost sister” would make an awesome TV movie so he files the idea away right next to his pitch for _Die Hard 6_ , which takes place on a cruise ship and involves a revenge plan by Hans Gruber’s niece (aka Jeremy Irons from the third one’s daughter).

Speaking of which, maybe Marissa can help him brainstorm a third act climax for that one. So far all he has in that part of the script is ‘cruise ship blows up and John McClane dies but not really.’

On day eight, the cabin fever starts to set in, and Jake wonders how many more times he can walk through the same three rooms before it drives him crazy. The 9-9 still can’t find Douglas’ hideout, and his mother Annabelle claims to have not seen him since he helped her with the grand closing of her little antique shop over two years ago.

On day nine, Jake figures out where Douglas is; or rather, Douglas figures out where Marissa is.

• • •

The early spring days have been slowly getting longer, so the sun is only just starting to set by the time Jake ventures into the tiny kitchen for something he can scrap together for dinner. He’s had frozen pizza for the past four meals and—and he can’t believe he’s actually saying this—he genuinely doesn’t think he can stand another grease covered off-brand DiGiorno.

Unfortunately, the other options are far and few, unless of course he wants to poison his beautiful body with canned vegetables or the fruit Marissa has been storing in the freezer to keep it fresh. He settles for spaghetti in the end, and sets a pot of water to boil on the tiny stovetop while he digs through the overhead cabinets for the jar of tomato sauce he knows is in there somewhere.

He’s just about to pour the pasta into the water when there’s a knock at the door, and Marissa glances up from the article she’s reading on the couch with a questioning look and a hint of fear in her eyes.

Okay. They’ve rehearsed this. She’ll wait in the bedroom, he’ll get rid of whoever’s at the door. If someone comes into the apartment using force, she’ll climb out the fire escape and run like hell.

Jake tries to convince himself that it won’t come to that. He knows that logically there are a few other tenants in the building: the superintendent, an elderly lady on the first floor, a handful of college-age kids rooming together down the hall, etcetera. Holt had picked this apartment building for the safehouse specifically because it was a relatively shitty complex with a ridiculous amount of vacancy for New York, but it would have been an attention-catching type of suspicious to suddenly force the entirety of the building to empty so he let the scattered residents stay and rented a room on the least populated floor. Jake tells himself it’s just a neighbor looking to borrow a cup of sugar or whatever even as he pulls his gun from the bag in the closet.

He leaves the chain lock latched and cracks the door open just enough to peak through, and then his brain kind of stalls for a half a second as he stares into the face of Mark Douglas. The guy is huge—like, almost-as-big-as-Terry levels of huge—and Jake thinks for a moment that it’s entirely unfair that this guy’s name is something as basic and unassuming as _Mark_.

“Uh, hey,” he says, aiming for nonchalance and absolutely succeeding at playing it cool, “What’s up man?”

“I know she’s here,” says Douglas, and rams his shoulder into the door. The chain snaps on impact, and that kind of raw power might have even been a little hot if it weren’t for the fact that Mark Douglas has killed a whole bunch of people and is also now currently engaged in the act of trying to kill an additional person.

“NYPD,” Jake tries, even though it’s probably pointless, “Mark Douglas, you’re under arrest for— Oh boy.” The fist aimed towards his head buries itself into the wall instead, and Jake jumps out of the way and curses the architect of the apartment for the inadequate fighting room when he immediately stumbles against the coffee table.

Douglas seizes the opportunity, forcing Jake off balance again as he pushes him into the wall and squeezes Jake’s wrist until his fist flies open of its own accord. His gun clatters out of his hand and halfway under the couch, and Jake groans and mutters: “Not cool, man,” and uses his free arm to punch Douglas in the face.

That is, regrettably, the last solid hit he lands for a while.

By the time Jake’s head is bouncing off the wall separating the carpeted couch-and-tv area from the tiled kitchenette, his arms are starting to feel more like noodles than limbs and he thinks he might have bitten his own tongue after a clip to the jaw sent him spiraling into said wall.

To Jake’s credit, Douglas is equally out of breath (if considerably less sore) when he twists Jake’s arm up behind his back and pins him against the chipping paint.

“Where’s the lady?” Demands Douglas, and yanks Jake’s arm up until he can feel the joints in his shoulder scraping against each other.

“Gone,” Jake chokes out as smugly as he can, and hopes that Marissa actually did get the hell out of here while she had the chance.

Douglas swears, and Jake makes some ill-timed, ill-thought-out quip about language.

He only really regrets it a microsecond later when Douglas pulls his head back by the hair and slams Jake’s face into the wall once (his nose gives way with a crunch and hot blood gushes over his lips), twice (he grapples with the hand in his hair, blunt nails scrabbling weakly), three times (his vision is 80% black splotches and deteriorating fast).

Then he’s released. His brain can’t coordinate with his legs fast enough and he crashes limply to the ground. A voice is shouting. Something smashes. He’s going, going, gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://xshadowphantom.tumblr.com/)


	2. The Fallout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ!!
> 
> hi everyone. so this chapter took a really long time to wrap up, and that’s largely because the day I posted part one was the day everything regarding the BLM Movement took off. in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I was having a very hard time continuing to write for a show that’s all about cops. it took about three weeks for me to come back to this fic in my drafts.
> 
> in light of everything that is still happening in our lives, what we need to remember is that the characters in Brooklyn Nine-Nine are not real cops. they are idealized versions of what we wish the police could be. the real NYPD does not act like the version of the NYPD presented by this show. that doesn’t mean that we can’t watch and enjoy this show, it just means that we need to remember that the 9-9 are not the real police, they do not act like the real police, and they are not an accurate reflection of the real police. above all, we cannot use the actions of fictional cops to excuse the actions of real cops.
> 
> television cops (all of them, not just the B99 ones) are, at the end of the day, cop propaganda, because they make us forget about the harsh realities of our police departments. this is something we need to understand as we continue to fight for Black lives. in my end notes you’ll find a short list of links regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and what you can do to help.
> 
> thank you for reading this note and for all of your support,
> 
> \- xshadowphantom ♥︎

The first thing Jake thinks when he blinks his heavy eyelids open is that he has no idea where he is. Pale, haunting moonlight is streaming through a crack in the window curtains, illuminating a small strip of unfamiliar carpet that’s dotted with near-black spatters of something. The walls are bare and tan; some cheap motel art and a few tasteful shelves are the only decorations.

His head is pounding like the morning-afters of his college days and he wonders briefly if he’d gotten hammered last night and is now stuck in some crazy _The Hangover_ situation. Then he remembers that he’s a semi-responsible adult now, with a wife and maybe-future-kids, and writes that idea off.

But that brings him back to square one of why he’s lying on the floor in an apartment that definitely isn’t his with a ringing in his ears and no memories of the previous night.

He lets his head tilt from side to side on the matted carpet, and everything he sees only manages to confuse him more. There’s little mounds of shattered glass around the coffee table and a splintered mess where the door’s chain lock should be, and the wall between the living room and the kitchenette has a bloody, circular series of cracks about five feet, ten inches above the ground.

He squints at the hole. Did his face make that? It would explain the headache, at least.

Then his eyes come to rest on a bulky black handbag spilled open on the kitchen table, and it’s not one of Amy’s bags, and _oh_.

He won’t go as far as to say that it’s _all_ coming back to him, but bits and pieces of it are unscrambling slowly in his head. He’s... investigating the Pietrone Family? No, that doesn’t sound all the way right. He’s, uh...

_The witness! He’s protecting the witness!_

Oh no, that’s not good, that’s super not good. He’s supposed to be staying with Marissa but she’s not here and everything around him is basically evidence of a fight so that means someone got her and she’s gone and they might kill her and that’s _really not cool_.

The realization is the jolt of energy he needs, and with a series of weakly-orchestrated motions he manages to push himself up into a sitting position. Immediately his vision spins and tilts, and he claps a hand to his forehead to poke clumsily at the source of the throbbing pain. When his hand comes away there are rusty flakes under his nails and fresh blood on his fingertips.

Something itchy and warm starts to inch down his temple. He must have reopened a wound. He supposes that confirms the wall theory, though. Geez, he does _not_ want to remember how that happened. Also, looks like he’s adding first aid to his mental to-do list.

He spots his gun partially hidden under the couch and picks it up. The safety is still on and the clip is fully loaded, so all the blood on the floor is probably his. They should still test it though. It might be perp blood. Perp blood is good for identifying a perp, which is good for finding witnesses that are really probably hopefully not dead.

Investigating is also good for finding witnesses that are really probably hopefully not dead. He should do that. Okie dokie. So this is the living room/kitchen. There’s a bathroom off to the side, which he deduces with his expert skills of using his eyes to see that the door to said bathroom is open and he can look into it. There’s a second door next to it, this one closed, but he’s thinking bedroom because sleep is a thing that humans do.

Speaking of humans and sleep, he also kind of needs a nap, but he’s an adult and he’s working and there’s definitely something about head injuries and not sleeping so maybe the nap will wait.

Okay, what else? A third door by the entrance to the apartment. A closet? Closets hold useful stuff. He goes to the closet.

The moment he gets upright, he winces. The ringing is his ears is back.

Oh, no, that’s actual ringing. His phone is buzzing and jingling on the broken coffee table, practically dancing with the force of the vibrations.

“Shh,” he mutters angrily, because it’s far too loud for him to deal with right now. The phone listens after about 30 seconds and quiets down. Okay, um...where was he? Oh, right. Investigating.

There’s a duffel bag packed with a couple of bulletproof vests and some emergency supplies pushed into the closet below the shelves of sheets and towels. Cool. Very James Bond. Or maybe more like Jason Bourne, probably, what with the whole... memory problems.

Huh, he never noticed that both super spies have the initials JB. Like Justin Bieber! Is he onto something?

 _Focus, Jake_.

Okay, tactical gear means he can at least be somewhat prepared for a fight. He tries to pull the bag off the shelf, but it’s a little too bulky and he’s a little too off-balance so when it falls out of the closet and onto the floor he doesn’t bother trying to pick it up again and decides to just sit down next to it.

Ugh, is everything supposed to be spinning like that?

His holster comes out of the duffel first, and he loops it onto his belt in a familiar, practiced motion before sliding his gun into it. His taser gets clipped to the opposite hip next.

There’s a first aid kit in the bag and he realizes that he should probably do something about his face. He unwraps a little wipe from the kit and runs it over his face a few times where the bleeding is heaviest before smoothing a bandaid over the cuts he can find. It’s not perfect, and it leaves blood in his hair and crusted along the side of his face, but it’s the best he can manage right now and it’s better than nothing.

Okay, um, next step is...figuring out where Marissa might be. She’s got to be alive, right? Or else her, uh, body would be here. So the perp—Douglas, that’s his name, hooray for remembering—came in and took her. To his hideout? Probably. So he just has to figure out where that is. Did he know before?

Fuck. Okay. He’ll figure it out. Douglas wouldn’t go back to his own place, because that would be too easy. He knows the cops are looking for him, so he’d wanna go somewhere he felt safe but didn’t think would be found.

He might try his mom’s place, but that would also be too easy. Oh. _Oh_ , oh, oh. The antique shop! Annabelle Douglas said it closed around two years ago, but she never said the property was sold. If the family still owns the land, it would be the perfect place for Mark Douglas to camp out, right?

Right. Good solve. Now he just has to find the address. Um...how would he do that? Oh, the internet! The internet always knows stuff. It’s so smart. Like Amy. Amy always knows stuff too.

Okay, right, um, internet. Where’s his burner phone? Do flip phones even have internet? They have to, right? Yeah.

It takes him nearly fifteen minutes to even find the address, as typing on a ten-digit keypad is an incredibly tedious thing even before you factor in the little screen’s blue light sending stabbing lances of pain into his eyes when he stares at it for too long. Also, he’s entirely guessing as he uses the arrow keys to navigate the home screen, and opens the wrong app several times before getting a new browser page to load.

He steadies his fingers over the keypad and slowly punches in “Annabelle Douglas Brooklyn antique store.” He hopes autocorrect can fill in the missing gaps in his search, because the stupid phone is barely in focus and he can almost guarantee that he’s spelled everything wrong.

He wishes he had his iPhone. Siri would be able to read the dumb webpage out to him in seconds. Instead he has to squint and blink and rub at his eyes until the address sharpens long enough for him to copy it down on a sticky note with a shaking hand.

He’s never getting a head injury again, by the way. This freaking sucks. Thinking should not make his brain hurt this much.

Jake flips the dumb bright pain-inducing phone shut as soon as he’s got the place, and drops it back onto the remains of the coffee table before the evil rays of light can burn his brain out of his skull. The sticky note goes into his jacket pocket along with a few more bandaids he pulled from the first aid kit.

After a second, he readjusts his hoodie and leather jacket to cover his belt and holster, because he doesn’t want to freak anyone out by walking around after dark with a gun on his hip.

As he steps out into the hallway, he can’t help but feel like he’s forgetting something, but he also kinda always feels like that so it’s not a big deal. Besides, what’s that line Gina’s always saying? ‘If you can’t remember, then it’s not important’? He wonders if that applies to people with concussions.

Eh, it’s probably fine.

• • •

It’s a blessing, Jake thinks as he steps out into the cool night air, that it’s already dark outside. It saves him from having to do the cliché blinking-into-the-sunlight thing, and also from the pain of even more bright light against his sensitive eyes.

It’s also a curse, he concedes as he checks and double checks the street signs around him, because the last thing he clearly remembers is getting ready to make dinner, which means it could be hours since Marissa was taken.

All the more reason for his brain to get its ass in gear and help him out here. Okay, he’s going to Belmont, which is...this way? No, that way. Got it.

He starts off in what is hopefully the right direction, the dim light from the nearby street lamps providing a nice level of he-can-see-his-surroundings-but-it-doesn’t-worsen-his-headache visibility.

This is nice, kinda. Going for a walk, not the situation. The situation is pretty bad. But the nighttime walk is refreshing. Is this why people exercise? Maybe he should implement evenings walks into his largely nonexistent fitness regimen.

The patchwork of windows—some dark, some lit, some shuttered, some drawn, some wide open, some cracked and chipping, some pristine and decorative—pass him by as he stumbles carefully towards Belmont Ave, and he thinks that maybe he’s starting to understand his mom’s love of how nice some front doors are, because some of these windows are super pretty. For example the window with the vines painted up the side and little hat roof above it (a dormer window, it’s called, and he knows that now because Amy watched that Netflix show about the redhead girl and her house with a bunch of gables and spent an hour talking about the architectural differences between gables and dormers).

He imagines that each occupant has a personality to match their window’s design, like maybe the one with green, hand-painted shutters belongs to a Pinterest enthusiast with too much time on his hands, and the one with the off-white flower box filled with burgeoning petunias belongs to an aspiring writer with a pet cat who enjoys the view. Maybe his mom does the same thing when she’s surveying the neighbors’ doors. He should ask her next time he sees her; it’ll be a good conversation topic and maybe he can even insert his newfound knowledge of roofs and windows into a conversation with the Santiago parents to prove that he can be intellectual.

Twin honks jerk him out of his thoughts, and he nearly trips over his own sneakers. There’s a car stalling in the street a few feet behind him; the man behind the wheel is leaning out of the window.

“Yo, dude, you wasted?” Calls the driver. Jake stares back blankly.

“You need to call someone?” The man reiterates.

Oh, call! That’s smart. Jake should call Captain Dad, he always knows what to do.

Jake nods to himself and reaches into his jean pocket. It’s empty. He frowns, patting his pants again as if the phone might magically appear. “I don’t have my phone,” he says, and looks at the driver in confusion.

The guy gnaws on his lip, and his eyes dart around the dark street as if checking for other passersby. “Alright man, you’re definitely out of it. Do you live nearby? I can... I can drop you off somewhere, okay? I know you’re just the type of shady drifter I’m not supposed to be offering rides to but...I’m pretty sure you’re drunk and you probably shouldn’t be walking around alone like this.”

Oh, even smarter! Jake can just ask this guy to give him a ride to the antique store. Or, somewhere close to the antique store at least. A car driving up might spook Douglas, and that would be a bad thing, so Jake should ask the guy to leave him somewhere a few blocks away.

“A ride,” Jake parrots back, “Thanks.” The car doors unlock with a click and he slides into the passenger’s seat.

The driver’s eyes widen in surprise when Jake sits down. “Woah, is that blood?” He asks, a touch of alarm in his voice. He’s pointing at Jake’s face.

“I...” Jake trails off, touches a finger to his head, tries to think, “I got hit.”

The driver gives Jake another apprehensive look at that. “Okay, uh, where you heading?”

Jake digs around in his various pockets for another moment and pulls out the crumpled sticky note and scowls at his own handwriting for being so illegible. “Um, Belmont Ave. By St. Mary’s.”

The driver nods and shifts gears and the engine revs, so Jake assumes it’s safe to say he won’t have to answer any more questions and lays his head against the cool glass of the window. Oh, that feels nice. And the bumping of the road is actually really rhythmic and gentle. And his own personal Argyle is driving him to his own personal Nakatomi Plaza so he can save the day. And it’s good to be well-rested when you’re saving the day. So he’s just gonna take a nap really quick. Because...because you should nap when you’re tired, right?

Yeah.

Except apparently the universe doesn’t want him to nap, because it feels like only seconds after he’s closed his eyes that there’s a hand on his shoulder shaking him awake.

He groans at the rude interruption and mumbles unintelligibly.

“Hey, this is Belmont and Powell,” says an only slightly familiar voice, “You got an address?”

Jake rubs at his eyes. His vision is bleary and sluggish as he tries to piece the question together. “This ‘s fine,” he says, and pulls at the door handle until he half steps, half falls out of the passenger’s seat. The street seems to be teetering at such an extreme angle that Jake’s surprised gravity isn’t pulling him down the sloping sidewalk, especially when it continues to tilt and wobble before his eyes. “Thanks.”

The guy nods. “Yeah, well, uh, thanks for not being a serial killer.”

“Why wou’ I be a cereal killer?” Jake asks.

The driver shakes his head. “Just take it easy, man,” he instructs, “Drink some water.”

Jake frowns. Why would he drink water? Is he thirsty? He nods back anyway and waves goodbye as the car drives away because that’s the polite thing to do.

He turns around to find himself face to face with a glowing red and white hospital sign, and wonders for a minute why the taxi took him to St. Mary’s Hospital. He doesn’t have time to visit anyone right now, he’s on a mission for crying out loud! It’s okay though, because the antique store is only two blocks from here and he can just walk the rest of the way.

He does. It’s kinda nice, what with the night air and the shining moon. Maybe he should start talking evening walks more often.

Wait, has he already been through this?

Oh, it’s Douglas’ mom’s antique store! The old fashion-y shop looms before him, display windows half boarded up but still stocked with a small selection of creepy looking dolls and cheap decorative plates. He would insult the decorator’s taste, but the overwhelming presence of lace doilies and tiny spoons also kind of reminds him of the way Amy’s apartment used to look before they were together.

It’s too dark for him to see if there’s anyone inside, but hopefully that goes two ways and any potential occupants won’t have noticed him snooping around. He quickly circles the place, looking for some kind of back door or employee entrance because simply walking through the front door doesn’t seem like the best idea. For the first time all night he’s in luck, because he finds a second entrance round the back. It’s probably where the store put out its trash; it definitely smells like it. He’s surprised to find it unlocked, but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth on this one, because it allows him to slip silently into the two-story building.

• • •

He enters into what looks to be a back room, probably meant for storage and paperwork if the abandoned filing cabinets and scattered stacks of cardboard boxes are anything to go by. There’s another door across the room, this one cracked slightly open, and he does his best to walk in a straight line towards it without stepping on any of the crumpled paper and trash littered across the floor.

He’s, like, 87% successful, except for the part where he overshoots a bit and walks into a pile of boxes, which he only barely saves from toppling to the floor. He blinks in surprise as he scrambles to stop their descent, because he could have sworn that this pile was about four inches to the left of him instead of right in front of his face. Apparently his coordination isn’t exactly as good as it should be, which is super fun considering the situation.

He massages his temples and resorts to keeping a hand on the wall for balance when it becomes clear that he really can’t trust his vision.

When he makes it to the second door and peers through, he’s greeted with the sight five tall, broad, armed, leader-clad backs, and bites down on about a million curses. Dealing with Mark Douglas is one thing. Dealing with Mark Douglas _and_ _four of his buddies_ is an entirely different story.

They’re standing in a loose semicircle and facing away from him, and just beyond them is a chair. From Jake’s position, all he can see are the skewed legs of the chair’s occupant, but he’s willing to go out on a limb and say it’s probably Marissa in that chair.

Alright. Okay. He can do this. Just gotta...take on five perps in the dark, in their territory, with a massively raging headache given to him by one of the five aforementioned perps. Easy peasy lem— He freezes.

It doesn’t matter how scrambled his brain is right now, he _knows_ he didn’t imagine the muted footstep coming from just behind him.

Jake ducks just as a blur of silver and black cuts through the space where his head used to be. _Shit_. He turns the duck into a roll, and lets the momentum carry him into a crouch as he pulls the taser from his belt, already breathing heavily after barely thirty seconds of exertion.

His visions spots over for a moment, and he desperately thinks _not now_ as the room goes double and the shiny metallic whatever-it-is in his attacker’s hands flies towards his face a second time.

The adrenaline kicks in a second later, and any remnants of a headache flee as his body decides to prioritize living over reminding him of the pain he’s in. He ducks again, and this time the force of the swing brings his mystery guest out of the shadows. In the dim light, he can barely make out a feminine figure poised to lash out for a third time if he moves again.

Then she pauses, and Jake blinks and squints in disbelief as she lowers the cash register tray she’s holding in her hands.

“ _Marissa?_ ” He asks, once he’s absolutely sure she’s not a hallucination.

“Jake?” She whispers back, looking equally as confused.

“I thought you got taken!”

“I thought you were _dead_!” She eyes the blood coating his hairline meaningfully on the last word.

“Not yet,” he says, and hopes he looks at least a bit action movie worthy because that was an awesome response. Then his brain backtracks a few feet. “Wait a minute,” he hisses, as loudly as he dares, “If you’re here, then who’s out there? No, actually, first, what the hell are you doing here?”

Marissa shrugs. “Investigating,” she says, like that should be obvious.

“Are you insane? This is the hideout of the person who’s literally trying to kill you; you need to get out of here _now_.”

“No way,” she replies, stubbornly holding her ground, “This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the Pietrone Family, I’m not just gonna roll over and give up on the biggest story of my life.”

Jake rolls his eyes. “That’s assuming you live long enough to tell said story.”

“Besides,” she continues, like she hasn’t even heard him, “My preliminary investigation suggests that you got your ass kicked once already and I nearly took you out with nothing but an old cash register. If you try to go out there without my help you’re definitely going to get killed.”

She is, unfortunately, right about this one. His head gives another throb, but this time he pins part of the headache on Marissa’s inappropriately cavalier attitude.

Oh god. This is how Captain Holt feels every day.

A horrifying revelation, but there’s no time to dwell on it right now. They’ve got work to do.

“Okay,” he whispers, “You can help, but only because I physically don’t think I’d be able to make you leave right now. But you have to do everything I say, okay? No messing around.”

“I think I liked you better without the concussion,” Marissa says, “You’re too bossy now. This is supposed to be our Nick Cage moment.”

Jake groans and resists the urge to throw his head back against the wall, if only to avoid any additional head trauma. “This isn’t a movie, Marissa. Just—stay here. I have to do some recon. See what we’re up against.”

“‘Recon.’ Dope,” she mutters quietly, but promises to stay put while he figures out what the hell is going on.

Jake resumes his snooping position behind the cracked open door and peeks around it once more. Okay. Let’s review. Five guys, all armed. He can see the guns strapped to their waists and thighs and jackets. Not great odds, plus they’ve apparently got a hostage who is not Marissa and therefore could be literally anyone.

The ringleader is pacing now, and his voice is low and deadly, the underlying threat carrying in the air even if the exact words aren’t clear.

Then he turns, and the street lights’ glow break through the dusty windows and illuminate his profile, and Jake’s jaw drops.

 _Shit_. _Shit, shit, shit_. That’s Gianfranco Pietrone, son of Antonello Pietrone, heir to the entire freaking Pietrone crime family and Antonello’s trusty second-in-command.

And the captive is none other than Mark Douglas himself.

Which makes the other four guys Gianfranco’s lackeys; high ranking members of the family, heavily trained and particularly ruthless if they’re working jobs with the boss’ son.

Which makes this a hit on the hitman.

Which makes this entire mess even more of a mess.

“You’ve disappointed us for the last time, Douglas,” Sneers Gianfranco, and his voice echoes and rebounds hauntingly in the open space until it reaches Jake’s ears, “End of the line.”

A gun appears from the depths of his thick jacket, and levels steadily at Douglas’s forehead.

 _Oh, hell_.

For the record: next time, Rosa’s taking the protection detail, and Jake’s making a bowl of popcorn and watching a movie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun duuunnnnnn. will jake continue to regret his life choices? will marissa make more bad decisions? will concussion symptoms catch up to jake at the worst possible time? will the author take less than 3.5 weeks to update again??? find out next time ;)
> 
> and as promised, resources!
> 
> Two Master-lists of Petitions and Links:  
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/16tX2DDtea90m6V88kYy7_hCjsZ2rA_PHxKv0BhqiZAk/mobilebasic
> 
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-6P6yB79P4E5EfeyOgQSaaZ1FFgSDq1ZOM7J36bQLgM/mobilebasic
> 
> donating without money:  
> there are a number of youtubers who are donating their ad revenue to BLM. if you don’t have any money to give but still want to donate, just turn off your ad blocker and watch their videos!
> 
> Learn About More Ways to Help:  
> https://blacklivesmatter.carrd.co/#
> 
> stay safe ♥︎♥︎♥︎


	3. The Climax

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god we're back again
> 
> I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the bad times in brooklyn series turned one year old earlier this month, and the completion of my very first brooklyn fic was exactly 1 year ago today (feb 29, 2020)
> 
> special shoutout to me for doing 3 whole fics in the first 3 months and then spending the next 9 months on this one chapter. that's hot girl shit.

“I can do better,” Douglas pleads, “I swear, Franco, just give me another chance.”

“I gave you a second chance,” spits Pietrone. “You failed. Now the cops are after you. And do you know what happens when they catch you?”

“No, no,” says Douglas, “They won’t know you hired me. I won’t tell them, I swear, I swear, please.”

Pietrone barks out a laugh. “You’re a spineless piece of shit, Douglas. You’d sell us out just for the fun of it if you thought you could get away with it. And anyway, this is just business. They get you, they get us. Even if you didn’t flip they’d have grounds to bring the heat down on the whole family. You see why we can’t take that kind of chance.”

Douglas spews out another round of pleas, spluttering and begging, and Pietrone flips the handgun over and over between his palms and smiles like a cat playing with a mouse and Jake realizes with a jolt that Pietrone is just toying with Douglas.

He’s going to drag this out with threats and taunts and faux-considerations of letting Douglas live until the once-hitman is a crying, blubbering, mindless mess, then shoot him to send a message.

But that’s going to take time. Enough time for Jake to figure out how to stop it from happening.

“Jake!” Hisses his would-be accomplice, and waves from her shadowed hiding spot, “What’s going on out there?”

And then, of course, there’s the complication that is Marissa. He’s grateful for the potential help she’ll provide, sure, but she’s a civilian and really she shouldn’t even be here in the first place. Maybe it’s his fault, for watching all those action movies with her and encouraging the idea that random people should absolutely become involved in crime fighting schemes instead of alerting the actual authorities to handle said crime situations.

Then again, maybe she’d have done this anyway. She seems pretty stoked about the whole thing.

Jake scooches back across the floor to join her. “So, we’ve got a problem,” he starts.

“No duh,” she says, “What tipped you off?”

“A bigger problem,” he says, ignoring the sarcasm, “Douglas isn’t running this anymore. He’s the hostage. There are five members of the Pietrone crime family out there. They’re being led by Antonello Pietrone’s son—”

“Gianfranco,” she says, cutting him off as she nods. Jake frowns.

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

Marissa gives him an odd look. “I was investigating them, remember? For my story.”

“Right,” he says, “Right. Sorry.”

She shakes it off, but doesn’t stop frowning. “Okay,” she whispers, “We need a plan. We could try stalling. When’s backup getting here?”

Jake’s brain does the human mind equivalent of a Windows startup, complete with the nice ‘ding’ sound effect. _Oh_ , he thinks blankly, _Backup._ That’s _what he was forgetting_.

“You’re kidding,” says Marissa, and her voice is bordering somewhere between deadpan and disbelief. “You didn’t call for backup.”

“I’m concussed!” He defends, “I’m not exactly on my A-game right now.”

She shakes her head and groans in a way that’s distinctly Rosa-like. “Okay, fine. We pull the fire alarm. That’ll get a police response, right? Like in _Die Hard_? ‘Welcome to the party’ and all that.”

Jake shakes his head. “That’ll get a fire response before it gets my squad. Besides, the Pietrones could kill Douglas and run before anyone even gets here.”

“Well what’s your brilliant plan, then, _Mr. Detective_?”

Jake fixes her with a look that practically screams _please just do this for me_. “The Pietrones have two cars parked outside. I saw them on the way in. You get in one of them and go get help; I’ll stay here and make sure no one goes anywhere.”

Marissa scoffs. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

“Marissa,” he pleads, “You’re a civilian. You can’t be here. I can handle this; promise.”

“What happened to ‘I’m concussed! I’m not on my A-game!’”

“I don’t sound like that,” he says. He’s not pouting. He’s not.

Marissa sighs. “Jake, touch your index finger to mine,” she says sternly, seriously, and holds up her hand.

Easy.

He misses, his aim off a bit too far to the right. She doesn’t stop staring at him. “You moved it,” he insists quietly, even though he knows she didn’t.

“Touch your nose.”

He misses that one, too, but at least he doesn’t jab his own eye out.

“You’re uncoordinated,” says Marissa gently, “You can’t aim a gun. You’ve been slurring your words since you got here—did you even know that? And there’s _five_ of them out there; how are you going to stop them all?”

Her evidence, unfortunately, is fairly solid.

“Fine,” Jake says, “Fire alarm. Sure. But we still can’t just pull it and wait for help. Pietrone will kill Douglas, and then he’ll probably realize that we’re here and kill us, too. If we want to raise the alarm we’ll have to secure them first. I was thinking we could herd them into here, but I’m not sure how we would block off the exit and keep them in—”

“How about these?” Marissa interrupts. She’s holding up a bundle of plastic zip cuffs; in her free hand is a black duffel bag packed with professional-grade equipment.

Jake stares for a moment. “Has that been here the whole time?”

“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly, like this isn’t a huge reveal, “There’s tons of stuff back here. I think Douglas was operating out of this place; I’m like 90% sure I saw the jacket he was wearing when he tried to kill me.”

“Wait, you had access to literal bags full of actual weapons but when you thought I was the enemy you tried to brain me with a rusty _cash register_?”

“Listen, do you want the zip ties or not?”

Jake has a sudden, vivid flashback to three days ago when he was complimenting Marissa’s staying-alive skills and wonders how the hell he managed to misjudge her so thoroughly. He shoves a few zip cuffs into his jacket pocket and makes some mental adjustments to his master plan.

“Okay,” he says, “Here’s the deal. We’re gonna have to take out Pietrone and his guys quickly and covertly. Classic divide-and-conquer is probably our best bet. Is there anything in that bag that can cause a distraction?”

Marissa kneels down next to him and undoes the rest of the zipper. “Flash bang?” She asks, pointing to the dull green can nestled snuggly inside the bag and labeled in big block letters.

Jake shakes his head. “Too risky in here,” he says, “It would probably disorient us, too. Here, give me that grayish one with the red top.”

She passes it over. The canister’s bold white lettering gleams in the dim light. “Nice,” he mutters, “M18; military-grade smoke grenade. See if you can find some goggles in there, this is gonna make a pretty thick cloud. We’ll get good cover, but we’ll have to move quick. These things only last about a minute.”

She dives back into the bag, displacing protective gear and a worrying amount of high-end weaponry. Finally she retrieves a single set of tactical goggles.

“Only one pair,” she says, handing it over, “Guess he doesn’t believe in back-ups.”

Jake nods. “Perfect, that’s more incentive for you to stay put.” She looks offended. He ignores her. “Alright. If I know bad guys, they’ll probably come to fight in pairs of two. I’ll take the grenade. When I throw it, go left, drop your guy, and then _hide_. I’ll take care of everything else.”

Marissa nods, and there’s fear and determination and excitement mingling on her face.

Jake unclips the taser from his belt and motions for her to come closer. “Take this. You wanna be around twenty feet away when you use it. Both hands on the taser. Aim, then fire. Lower chest and stomach only. The current stops when you let go of the trigger.”

He passes it over to her. “Marissa, I’m teaching you how to use this strictly as a precaution, got it? That means _do not engage_ , no matter what happens. I’m serious. You can take down that one guy, and then you stay out of sight, don’t get involved, and please, _please_ , don’t get killed.

Her expression deflates at the intensity in his voice and she eyes the blood that’s still left over on his face. “Yeah,” she says, “Same to you.”

“Deal,” he says. “Okay, here goes.”

Jake waits until they’ve both retreated to their respective hiding spots before holding up the metal register tray. He takes a deep breath, holds it and counts to three, and bangs the tray against the wall. Metal collides with concrete with the sound of a gong being struck, and the noise reverberates up his arm and down his back with a force that makes him shudder. The clanging echoes in his skull for far too long to be comfortable, and he winces a bit. Beyond the door, a hush falls over the occupants of the store.

Jake holds his breath on instinct, pressing himself more firmly against the wall as if it will make any difference. On the other side of the room, Marissa looks like a deer in headlights.

The voices outside the room start up again, but they’re too quiet to make out. From the footsteps that have started to increase in volume, Jake’s gonna assume some unlucky winner just got elected to the position of ‘go check out that noise’.

A moment later, the door to the room swings open and Gang Lackey #1 steps slowly through the frame, squinting into the dark corners while his fingers twitch on the trigger of his gun.

Jake holds his position as the man inches forward, and as soon as the perp is no longer visible from outside the room, he swings. The tray catches Lackey #1 on the jaw, and his whole body jerks back as he falls to the ground with a resounding thud. One down, four to go. If they didn’t have Pietrone’s attention before, they definitely did now.

“Marc!” Calls one of the other gang members, “What’s going on in there?”

Jake pauses for a few seconds, then tosses the cash register onto the ground in reply. He’s prepared for the noise this time, but the sound still makes him press a hand to his left ear and grimace. On the bright side, he’s rewarded with the sound of several gun safeties being removed.

This time, Pietrone sends two of his men to stake out the room. Excellent. Right on track. They don’t enter the room, choosing instead to stand just outside the door with their guns raised. Thank god for the constant predictability of bad guys.

“Marc?” Says Lackey #2 again, like maybe his buddy is just playing a super badly timed prank.

Lackey #3 takes a more direct approach, delivering the classic: “Whoever’s in there, come out or we start shooting.”

They asked for it. Jake lights the fuse on the smoke grenade and tosses it through the doorway. There’s just enough time for Lackey #2 to recognize the device and murmur an expletive or two before thick red smoke starts to fill the building.

Jake peels away from the wall instantly, double checks that his goggles are firmly in place, and sweeps through the opening and towards the sound of Lackey #3 fumbling to find the wall in front of him. Jake lets the butt of his gun connect with the man’s temple, and Lackey #3 is down for the count and probably looking at a nice concussion to match Jake’s. Yay. Head trauma for everyone. He’s going to be the Oprah of head trauma.

From the yelp of pain and matching thud a few feet away, it sounds like Marissa’s taken care of her guy as well. Three down, two to go.

The smoke canister is already edging towards its last legs, the steady hiss morphing into a puttering whistle, and Jake rushes to find a more secure hiding spot while he’s still got some cover.

In the center of the store, Pietrone is losing his cool. “What the fuck did you do?” He demands. He’s got his gun pointed at Douglas, but his eyes are wild, darting around the store like he’s expecting an ambush to materialize at any moment. For a second, Jake wonders if this is how Batman feels right before he kicks some ass.

Then, as he crouches in the shadows and waits for Bad Guy #4 to get close enough to knock out, he thinks that maybe the Batman analogy isn’t that far off right now, which is awesome and he’s definitely going to brag about that to Charles later.

Unfortunately, #4 is smarter than the rest of his pals and decides to take the offensive, firing off a round of preemptive shots. Jake throws himself behind a stack of boxes just in time to watch the wall explode into a thousand little flakes as it makes room for a round of bullets. He groans and blinks rapidly, the sporadic movement and reverberating bangs not a good combination for him right now.

With the smoke mostly gone, he pulls the goggles from his face. There’s still a haze of red lingering in the air, but having his peripherals free is a bit more important now that gunfire has entered the scene.

He tosses the goggles to the side as a decoy, and the resultant clatter is enough to pull Bad Guy #4’s attention off to the side, providing an opening for Jake to dole out one more head injury.

Marissa should be breaking for the fire alarm any second now, and there’s only one man left to take down.

Jake peers out from behind his temporary cover and freezes.

Pietrone is gone.

“Shit,” he hisses, flicking the safety off his gun instantly and scrambling to recalculate. He needs to find better cover; being exposed with an enemy you can’t find has never, ever ended well for anyone ever.

He turns just in time to hear a whoosh of air next to his ear, and his vision whites out in an explosion of pain.

He doesn’t pass out, not quite, but his brain is short-circuiting as he hits the ground; vision blotting out and body utterly uncooperative. He’s aware of words circling above him, muted and out of reach, and a heavy metallic clink rebounds wetly in his waterlogged ears as the end of something dull and gray and solid drags in front of his eyes.

Huh.

When did Pietrone get a baseball bat?

The man is talking to him, Jake thinks, but the only thing he can hear is the sound of his own blood rushing through his veins, punctuated occasionally by his stunned, gasping breaths.

The end of the bat nudges experimentally against Jake’s temple, and he can’t quite manage a groan at the pressure against his skull. Whatever sound he was trying to make gets stuck halfway up his throat. He feels like he’s going to throw up, or black out. Hopefully not both.

The whole room is tilting back and forth. Maybe it’s just him.

The tip of the metal bat is covered in blood when it moves back into Jake’s line of vision, and it leaves scrapes of red across the floor like the world’s most morbid paintbrush.

“Where’s your friend hiding?” Asks Pietrone, and the words filter through Jake’s brain one tiny droplet at a time.

He shakes his head weakly against the floor, the movement little more than a single flop of his head. “‘M here alone,” he says, and hopes it sounds even a fraction more convincing than it feels.

“That’s bull,” barks Pietrone. “How many more are with you?”

Jake looks up, up and up and wow that’s dizzying, and finds Pietrone’s face. He shakes his head.

Pietrone glares down at Jake. Then he smiles, amiably, and if Jake were more aware there would be major warning bells going off in his head. “Well, if you’re gonna be like that.”

Jake frowns. There’s a sudden pressure on his wrist, light but firm, and when he shifts his head back down to look he sees a thick boot centered over his hand. His sluggish brain puts the pieces together a second too late, and he barely has the time to gasp out a frantic: “don’t” before all of Pietrone’s weight comes crashing down and Jake shouts.

His body jerks against the pain on instinct, and he bites down hard on his cheek when the only thing he succeeds in doing is shifting the broken bones still pinned under Pietrone’s foot. The pain grounds him at least, and his head clears just enough that he’s now got the pleasure of understanding in great detail just precisely how fucked he is.

“Next thing I break is his neck,” shouts Pietrone, swiveling his head to every corner. “You’ve got five seconds.”

Jake lets his eyes fall shut. _Stay put_ , he pleads silently, _please stay put_.

“Four.”

It’ll be fine. Marissa will get out; get help.

“Three.”

 _Don’t let Amy be first on the scene_ , he thinks, and hopes the prayer reaches any higher power that’s out there.

“Two.”

“Hey, butthead!” A new voice interrupts the countdown. The next few moments happen in a jumble. There’s a crackle and a buzzing sound and a thump, and the weight disappears from his arm and he snatches it in towards his chest reflexively.

“Holy shit,” breathes the same voice a moment later, “I can’t believe that worked. Wow. Can I get one of these? Oh, shit! Jake?”

There are hands on his shoulder, pushing him gently onto his back, and Jake thinks that this would probably be a good time to get those eyes open again, but now that he’s lying here he’s starting to realize just how much of the past hour has been fueled by adrenaline, and the nausea and fatigue are crashing down on him like waves.

“Jake? Can you hear me?”

He blinks. There’s a woman kneeling next to him. For a moment, all her registers is her hair, dark and curly and full of volume, and he thinks _Rosa_ , but Rosa’s skin isn’t that dark and Rosa’s eyes have never looked that wide and uncertain.

 _Marissa_ , whispers some distant part of his brain. Right, Marissa. Journalist. Case. Working.

Her eyes scan up and down his face, and she looks like she’s waiting for him to say something. Oh, she asked him a question, didn’t she? He can’t remember what it was.

“Fuck, fuck, are you dying?” She frowns and slips a hand under his head, feeling around the back of it and he grimaces because that _hurts_.

He blinks again. “What happened?” He asks.

“Shit,” says Marissa, “Um, you gave me your taser, remember? I used it on Pietrone.”

That’s against protocol. He shouldn’t have done that. “Don’t tell Captain Holt,” he says.

The ceiling is old and dirty and there’s a splotch on it that looks like Frankenstein’s monster. Not Frankenstein, though, because Amy says he’s the doctor.

“ _Jake!_ ” Marissa is shaking his shoulder. The side of his face is itchy and stiff and he crinkles his nose at the sensation.

Soft fingers probe at his right hand, pulling it gently away from his chest, and he drags his eyes over to look. It’s throbbing and it looks... wrong. He has the impulsive urge to touch it, even though every part of his brain tells him that he should absolutely not touch it.

“Leave it alone,” says Marissa, setting it down carefully, “That’s definitely broken.”

He doesn’t doubt it. His head hurts. “What happened?” He asks, using his left hand to push himself up off the ground.

“Hey, wait—”

He ignores her protests, but accepts her outstretched arms to get his legs under him and stand.

Marissa’s hands hover by his shoulder. “Maybe you should sit down,” she says, “I don’t— He hit your head pretty hard.”

“’m fine,” he says, “Where’s...” he trails off. He can’t remember what he was going to ask.

He squints and tilts his head. There’s three Marissa’s standing in front of him now, but he could have sworn there was only one of her just a second ago.

Maybe she’s a triplet.

“Marissa?” He asks, because he doesn’t know her sisters’ names, “I’m—.”

He doesn’t get to finish the thought.

Everything is dark. He’s on the ground again even though he doesn’t remember sitting.

He blinks, and immediately regrets opening his eyes.

There’s a blinding light and it’s flashing and loud and _way too bright_ , and the streaks of pain lancing through his eyes into his eyebrows and his temples and the side of his brain are chasing every other thought away, and even when he closes his eyes as tight as he can until colors pop into view the light doesn’t stop flashing and blinking and the _noise_ that goes with it is too much, _too much_ , and his head feels like fresh fruit in a blender.

He reaches out blindly and grasps onto the first thing he finds, which is warm and sort of squishy but also firm, and he squeezes like somehow it will make the agony splitting through his skull go somewhere else.

There’s a hiss of pain that doesn’t come from him and a voice gasps: “Jake, stop, it’s okay—” and a hand pries his fingers away from the thing that he now realizes is another person’s arm.

The noise dampens suddenly, still very loud and very present but muffled significantly. He gets his eyes open to a squint, and sees Marissa leaning over him while the lights above him flash and flash and flash. Her hands are pressed over his ears and her face is all twisted up with worry and she’s mouthing something to him over and over again but he can’t make out what it is.

There’s a loud banging sound, different from the repetitive blare of the flashing lights, and the room is suddenly filled with new voices, loud and yelling and overlapping in a disorienting haze, and Marissa jumps and lets out a startled scream.

Panic flashes through him. He surges up—Pietrone must have woken up, or one of the others—he thought he cuffed them but maybe they got loose—but the moment he puts his hands on the ground to push, a burning heat spikes through his right hand and wrist and his consciousness wavers and pulses in time with the pain.

There’s a shout of alarm and strong hands grip his shoulders just as he starts to fall back, and his vision is suddenly blocked by a surge of white—he thinks for a moment he must have passed out again, but then the squares of white come together hazily to form the letters NYPD splashed across a black vest.

His head hurts.

He frowns and blinks and looks up a bit, and there’s a blurry but familiar face resting above the vest. He smiles brightly.

“Captain! How’s it hanging?” He asks, and promptly blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, jokingly, on chapter two: haha, sure hope it doesn't take me a month to update again!  
> me, now, knowing that I am not just a clown I am the whole damn circus: ah. yes. excellent.
> 
> anyway, I hope you enjoyed chapter 3, and the comfort portion of this h/c fic will be coming soon in the next and final installment of memories!
> 
> while you wait, let's hang out on [tumblr](https://xshadowphantom.tumblr.com/)! ♥︎


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